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THE GROWTH OF A MUSTACHE 25
ager that night, he couldn't make head or tail of it, but I obligingly translated it for him.
"Monsieur, " I read, "It will give to me beaucoup de plaisir to have Henry and Adolphe remain away from Vecole on Wednesday afternoon to play in the show. I hope they will perform most excellently. Avec mes sentiments les plus distingues.— -Mrs. Claire Menjou."
Henry and I were given oversize togas and pushed onto the stage that very night. After a week in Ben Hur we became established supers at the Euclid Avenue Opera House. That season we "acted" in The Pit, with William Lackaye, and Romeo and Juliet, with Sothern and Marlowe.
We learned to make our exits and entrances without tripping over the tormentors and to say "walla-walla-walla-rhubarb-rhubarb," which is what supers have been saying for hundreds of years regardless of whether the mob is storming the gates or merely chatting in the public square. At every performance I used to search for new and startling ways of saying "walla-wallawalla" in hopes that somebody would single me out as a superior performer and give me a real line of dialogue. But I was doomed to disappointment, for I m afraid no one has ever discovered a way to make "walla-walla-walla" an outstanding speech.
But some years later I found out that in Hollywood quite a few supernumeraries, distinguished for their lack of talent, were able to advance themselves to highly paid careers by simply switching the old "walla-walla-walla" cry to "yezzir, yezzir, yezzir."
When Father learned that Henry and I had been playing hooky from high school to play-act with low characters of the stage, he declared that we were becoming incorrigibles and that a firmer hand than Grand mere's was needed to guide us. He and Mother were too busy at the restaurant to take over the task, so he resolved to send us to some school where we would learn discipline. The one he selected was Culver Military Academy in